Ingredients--Salt

Salt supposedly slows or interferes with yeast in some way.

I make bread by the sponge method, which I learned from the Tassajara Bread Book (one of the only bread cookbooks I actually like). A sponge is a batter-like combination of ingredients that you let rise for a while before you add enough flour to make it into a dough. To give my yeast a nice head start, I leave out the salt until after the sponge stage.

It's important not to forget to do it at that point, and it's easy to forget. And the bread is pretty poor without salt. So I add the salt to one cup of flour, and put that next to my sponge, as the first thing to add when I start making it into dough. That works well.

Butter or oil, if used, is best added after the sponge stage, too.